What contributes to the sustainability of self-organized non-profit collaboration in disaster relief？A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

ABSTRACT

This study explores how intra-alliance factors (size, resource constraints, mission nature, operating mechanisms) and contextual factors combine to contribute to the sustainability of self-organized non-profit collaboration in disaster relief. A fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis was used to analyze 17 non-profit collaborations that emerged after the 2008 Wenchuan and 2013 Lushan earthquakes in China. The findings show that the absence of political pressure (a contextual factor) and having a formal contract-based operating mechanism (an intra-alliance factor) are two necessary conditions for a sustainable non-profit collaboration, and two configurations are identified to contribute to a high degree of sustainability for non-profit collaboration.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• self-organized non-profit collaboration
• disaster Relief
• fsQCA

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Professor Bin Chen at the City University of New York and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The sponsors played no part in the study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the paper; nor in the decision to submit the paper for publication.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Due to the unavailability of contact information, the remaining 13 collaborations were not included in this article. This potentially increased the bias since the cases that were not included in this article may have discontinued their operations at very early stages of the collaboration. Therefore, we researched all available information on these 13 collaborations using archival data. We found that six of them terminated at a very early stage after the earthquake, but the other 7 sustained their disaster relief efforts for a longer time. Furthermore, among the 13 omitted collaborations, 46.2% of the collaborations had no more than 8 members (small size), and 53.8% had more than 8 members (big size). We set the crossover point at 8 members to distinguish between the small and big collaborations. It means that the distribution of size among the 13 collaborations was similar to that of the 17 cases studied in this paper (41.2% of the 17 collaborations are small, and 58.8% are big). Thus, even if we have not included all 30 collaborations, the 17 cases in our article may serve as a good representation of the population.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71774107]; National Social Science Foundation of China [20BGL257]; Shanghai Philosophy and Social Science Foundation, China [2017BGL016]; Humanities and Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China [17YJC630135].

Notes on contributors

Guijuan Tang

Guijuan Tang is an associate professor in the School of Public Economics and Administration at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, China. Her research interests include collaborative governance, nonprofit collaboration and post-disaster recovery. Her recent work appears in Safety Science, Disasters, Natural Hazards and others.

Feng Wang

Feng Wang (corresponding author) is a professor in the School of Public Economics and Administration at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, China. Her research interests include public and nonprofit organization management, environmental governance and collaborative governance. Her recent work appears in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Management and Organization Review, International Public Management Journal, Public Policy and Administration, Urban Affairs Review, Public Performance & Management Review, Geoforum, Energy Policy, and others.